End of semester

At first I was a bit pessimistic about this semester. I had never worked on or studied the audio side of the industry so intensely. I thought I would hate it, I like working with cameras and images, but I found it very interesting working on things like our soundscape and radio production and gained many skills working with Pro Tools. I had never used this software before and would be lying if I said I picked it up straight away. However it has grown on me and I can now edit competently in the programme. This ability to use this software is, what I think, the best thing that has came out of this semester.
Some tasks that were set to us were a bit bittersweet, for example, every time we were asked to conduct a Vox Pop. It was good that we learnt how to use this important technique effectively but editing them were mind numbingly boring! Saying that, I find editing anything that wasn’t writ by myself boring. Not just the Vox Poop, the interviews weren’t the most exciting bits of material to edit. However the interview with Tom Cholmondeley was a different story!

Some of the subjects we were taught, health and safety, Ofcom, and roles and regulations were incredibly slow but at the end of the lesson I had learnt so much about this side of the media. I actually really enjoyed learning about something that few people outside the industry know about.

I think the equipment that is available to us is brilliant, the computer I’m writing this on, the software,the campus, everything. The problem is, this equipment is only free for us to use two days of the week and for the £3000+ that we are paying for this course, to say I’m not satisfied would be an understatement! This has been the reason why a lot of people haven’t been able to meet deadlines and rush their work. Considering how much we each pay a year, for our class to have a yearly budget of £400 is a joke!

I’m glad I’ve stayed on top of my work for this semester. It has enabled me to spend a bit more time on things I would have rushed in the past, like this blog. I’m fairly happy with it. I haven’t taken the easy road by pulling the material off the Internet, I’ve taken time and put a lot of thought into each blog which hopefully shows. I had intended to add more pictures and links to relevant material on the Internet, but as I’m not connected to the World Wide Web where I’m living, just completing this blog has been a challenge.

Soundscape

The soundscape was first created at Simon Fraser University in the early 1970s. What was originally intended for educational and archival purposes, the “Soundscape composition” soon developed into its own form of electro acoustic music. The first study on this subject was “The Vancouver soundscape” (published in 1973) which aimed to draw attention to the sounds that often went unnoticed.

were many aspects of this form of music that was to be taken into consideration when creating my own soundscape composition. I had to develop a piece of audio which would install an image in the listener’s mind of a specific scenario, activity, or environment.
My composition was based on a hobby of mine that I find relaxes me and gives me something to do when I’m bored. Drawing is something that takes imagination, patience and good observation. It’s something that everybody can relate to since childhood. Because of this I think that listeners will be able to find it easy to recognise the journey I will be taking them on.
It starts off with the preparation, rustling of paper, pencils rolling about the table. After pulling the chair closer into the table, the drawing begins. Pencil marks are made on the paper followed by smudging and blowing off shavings from the eraser. At the beginning of the drawing you hear steady breathing. This is because the person, at this moment in time, is fairly relaxed. As time goes on sounds occur that would begin to agitate an artist, for example, creaking of chairs, coughing, a ticking of a clock which speeds up to symbolise the artists impatience. All these sounds become more dense and faster until it all becomes too much for the artist to concentrate. When all these sounds reach a climax they stop and the room falls silent. The artist walks to the kitchen, pours a glass of water and returns to his table. Now having relaxed, the artist takes a deep breath and finishes the work he started.

I think my composition achieves the element of being recognisable by the listener. This may be because I have used nothing but found sounds in the piece. I had originally planned on adding a high pitched flat line for the part where the artist is starting to become overwhelmed. This abstract sound, I feel, could have been used as everybody can relate to, at sometime or another, having had ringing in their ears.
Being a keen, amateur artist myself, I hope to give the listener an insight into the problems that sometimes occur when I’m trying to create my very own masterpiece and how I would overcome those barriers. I hope it illustrates a healthy way of looking at life itself, that when your down or think your stuck in a certain situation or state of mind. Take a time out. Look at life. And do what ever it is you have to do to continue creating your masterpiece, be it a drawing or happiness itself.

Vox-Pop

The Vox-Pop comes from the Latin ‘vox populi’, ‘the voice of the people’. It’s used by reporters to get an indication of public reaction to a piece of news. A number of people would be interviewed and would reply to the same questions which would then be edited together.

The class was set a task for the day. It was to create a Vox pop on what the students of the college thought about a certain area of television.

The question that I put to the students was:

What is it about reality TV programmes that you think people find so appealing?

Bit of a boring subject, but it always is, doing a Vox pop! Normally the scariest thing about conducting one is gathering the material, but for some reason, for this task I didn’t have a problem with finding the courage to ask a bunch of random people about this truly boring subject.
The worse thing is when you ask someone the question and they don’t give you any kind of answer. You can’t say to them it was crap and ask for another one because they simply don’t want to hang about. Luckily this time I got quite a few good responses from my question. In the end I gathered about twenty answers, with the majority of them being usable.
The next task was editing my findings. This is the most boring and time consuming Vox pop. The problem I came across whilst editing was finding that I had interviewed some of people in the cafeteria where the ambience is high and very obvious, and others in quite environments like in a class room. To fix the problem of having the Vox pop change from loud to quite sections, and knowing I couldn’t get rid of the background from the cafeteria, I decided to use that ambient sound over the quiet parts as well hopefully giving the impression the Vox pop took place in the same environment.

Although it takes a lot skill to create a good and effective Vox pop, for me, its not one of those projects I ever feel happy about once finished. I can’t feel proud of what I’ve created because I find them simply bland. For a project to inspire, it needs to require me to use my creativity rather than my intelligence, which I think are the grounds on which the Vox pop relies on. Your intelligence is key when creating a Vox pop as you need to know how to structure the piece to make it bias, using the right opening and closing statement. Where creativity is concerned, I don’t think it is at all evident in a Vox pop, they all sound the same to me.